E-Learning in Africa: Massive, online and free | North Africa

E-Learning in Africa: Massive, online and free | North Africa

How solid is the cloud?

Despite mixed feelings in the market about migrating IT to the cloud and uncertainty about the security of that which resides off-site (even that which is governed by a hybrid cloud model), the level of security in the cloud is really a matter of who you decide to trust with company data.

This is the view of experts at operations who have established leadership positions in this increasingly competitive area of ICT.

http://www.it-online.co.za/2013/08/12/how-solid-is-the-cloud/

Is Apple ready for app changes?

New ways of delivering apps on mobile phones could spell trouble for Apple after it unveiled its latest iPhone. The new 5S has impressed onlookers with its fingerprint reader, while adding a better camera and a faster processor, but Dr Ronald Klingebiel, assistant professor of strategy at Warwick Business School, believes that Apple should go beyond product innovation and develop its strategy further as well. Commoditisation of mobile hardware and transformations in the way apps are delivered will reduce Apple’s ability to reap profits from smartphones.

http://www.it-online.co.za/?p=75325?utm_source=dailymailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article

Why Apple suddenly needs Google again

Once back-slapping friends, the relationship between Apple and Google was torpedoed by the ascendency of Android. Eric Schmidt resigned from the Apple board, Steve Jobs declared "thermonuclear war" against Android, and little by little Apple disentangled Google services from its products as retaliation.

It's that last point that that Apple must now reconsider.

http://www.zdnet.com/why-apple-suddenly-needs-google-again-7000020442/?s_cid=e004&ttag=e004

Judge Sets Restrictions for Apple on E-Books

As punishment for engaging in an e-book price-fixing conspiracy, Apple will be forced to abide by new restrictions on its agreements with publishers and be evaluated by an external “compliance officer” for two years, a federal judge has ruled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/business/media/judge-sets-final-restrictions-for-apple-on-e-books.html?ref=technology

Maze made out of 250 000 Books!!

Stunning! 

Want to get lost in a good book? Well, now you can literally lose yourself in a few good books thanks to Brazilian artists, Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo.
Books destined for art and other creative uses in the era of digital books ??

Duke sets the standard! New service to users: Digitize This Book

Setting a standard!       New Library Service: Digitize This Book

The Duke University Libraries are pleased to announce a new digitization-on-demand service that lets you have out-of-copyright books scanned and delivered to you digitally for free.

 

From stacks to scanner to your inbox. We’re piloting a new service to digitize public domain books for Duke users on demand.

Starting this semester, Duke University faculty, students, and staff can request to have certain public domain books scanned on demand. If a book is published before 1923* and located in the Perkins, Bostock, Lilly, or Music Library or in the Library Service Center (LSC), a green “Digitize This Book” button (pictured here) will appear in its online catalog record. Clicking on this button starts the request.
Within two weeks (although likely sooner), you will get an email with a link to the digitized book in the Duke University Libraries collections on the Internet Archive. You—and the rest of the world—can now read this book online, download it to your Kindle, export it as a PDF, or get it as a fully searchable text-only file. And you never have to worry about late fees or recalls!

Figshare for sharing academic papers with their datasets

Figshare seems to be gaining important in scholarly communication - here is a blogpost from a social scientist on how she uses it.


figshare is a repository where users can make all of their research outputs available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner.

figshare allows users to upload any file format to be made visualisable in the browser so that figures, datasets, media, papers, posters, presentations and filesets can be disseminated in a way that the current scholarly publishing model does not allow.

Creative Destruction and Library Services

I came across this editorial in Issues in Science and TechnologyLibrarianship
Excerpt:
“ …..Reduced library visitorship due to the more desirable digital delivery of services and collections means that science librarians (among others) have to change their way of operating. For example, the recent emphasis on the creation of inviting spaces to attract users is probably not an effective long-term survival strategy. Think about it: What if the Department of Motor Vehicles' stated objective was to get as many people into their brick-and-mortar office as possible? What if bank executives instructed their branch managers to induce as many people to come into the bank as they could? Would these strategies actually improve service or outcomes?
The digital delivery of information means that librarians have to develop more direct-to-reader services. And because publishing infrastructure and standards are so well developed in science, it will be the science librarians who are first in this area. If we can't deliver content and services to our users in their offices and labs, then it is likely that someone else (e.g. Google and Amazon) will…”  

Research impact: Altmetrics make their mark

Alternative measures can yield useful data on achievement — but must be used cautiously.

Steve Pettifer and his colleagues did not heavily promote their 2008 paper on digital library tools. So it came as a surprise when, in August 2012, Pettifer got an e-mail from the Public Library of Science (PLOS), based in San Francisco, California. A PLOS representative told him that people had viewed or downloaded the article (D. Hull et al. PLoS Comput. Biol. 4, e1000204; 2008) more than 53,000 times. It was the most-accessed review ever to be published in any of the seven PLOS journals. The paper had come out just as biologists' interest in digital publishing was building and the number of tools was exploding, says Pettifer, a computer scientist at the University of Manchester, UK. “It hit the right note at the right time,” he says

A New Polemic: Libraries, MOOCs, and the Pedagogical Landscape

In Brief: The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has emerged in the past few years as the poster child of the online higher education revolution.  Lauded and derided, MOOCs (depending on who you ask) represent the democratization of education on a global scale, an overblown trend, or the beginning of the end of the traditional academic institution. MOOCs have gained so much critical traction because they have succeeded in unmooring educational exchanges and setting them adrift in the sea of the internet.  Although the MOOC is a new and evolving platform, it has already upended facets of education in which librarians are heavily invested including intellectual property, digital preservation, and information delivery and curricular support models. Consequently, to examine the MOOC as a microcosm is also to explore how the scope of academic librarianship is changing and will continue to change. Librarians and information professionals—who serve as bibliographers, purchasing managers, access advocates, copyright and preservation experts, and digital pioneers on many campuses—are uniquely situated to mediate this disruption and to use this opportunity to develop strategies for navigating an environment in flux......
....Librarianship, which has undergone its fair share of ‘disruption’ in the past few decades, is a field that is (perhaps uniquely) primed for change. In the context of online instruction, librarians have new opportunities to expand the realm of their work. In practice, this may mean taking on more active roles as co-instructors and content creators, educating faculty about open access scholarship, authoring best practice guidelines for intellectual property management, facilitating intra and inter institutional networks, or developing a new controlled vocabularies and preservation protocols for archiving and repurposing MOOCs.   .....

Collaborating on a Conference Panel with Google Drive

Collaborating on a Conference Panel with Google Drive

Record how you search, not just what you find

Record how you search, not just what you find: Thoughtfully constructed search terms greatly enhance the reliability of digital research

The way in which digital search results are determined and displayed are continually changing and a lack of a defined approach can have significant repercussions on research. M. H. Beals recommends employing the Boolean search method because of the flexibility it provides in adjusting and recording search parameters. By creating a permanent record of how you obtained your search results, you can ensure that your methodology is consistent

From LSE blog 

10 challenges scholarly publishers are facing

By Rick Anderson - Interim Dean, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah
"....I have polled some of my colleagues who work for publishers, vendors,  consultants, and other service providers on the commercial side of the scholarly communication equation. Here, based on the input I received ... are ten of the biggest challenges publishers are currently facing, presented in no particular order...........

 I was interested to see Altmetrics, Open Access and Amzon on the list!  (Eileen)

How to reach the many offline students | News | Times Higher Education

Educators cannot assume that all young people are old hands online, research shows... Academics and university administrators may be struggling to keep up with social media, but research shows that the digital divide is not just generational. It is racial, ethnic and socio-economic, and there are even differences in the way that men and women communicate online.

How to reach the many offline students | News | Times Higher Education

Scopus, you’re unravelling

NZ eResearch Librarian takes Scopus to task for indexing of non-academic journals

Scopus, you’re unravelling. The urge to be inclusive may be partly well-intentioned but when you move into uncharted territory you need to be more than normally vigilant. Instead you’ve tucked your shirt into your underpants and are grinning fixedly and hoping no one has noticed. We’ve noticed. It’s just embarrassing. - See more at: http://masseyblogs.ac.nz/library/2013/08/19/scopus-youre-unravelling-2/#sthash.7EjdIhz7.dpuf

Scopus, you’re unravelling. The urge to be inclusive may be partly well-intentioned but when you move into uncharted territory you need to be more than normally vigilant. Instead you’ve tucked your shirt into your underpants and are grinning fixedly and hoping no one has noticed. We’ve noticed. It’s just embarrassing. - See more at: http://masseyblogs.ac.nz/library/2013/08/19/scopus-youre-unravelling-2/#sthash.7EjdIhz7.dpuf

Scopus, you’re unravelling. The urge to be inclusive may be partly well-intentioned but when you move into uncharted territory you need to be more than normally vigilant. Instead you’ve tucked your shirt into your underpants and are grinning fixedly and hoping no one has noticed. We’ve noticed. It’s just embarrassing. - See more at: http://masseyblogs.ac.nz/library/2013/08/19/scopus-youre-unravelling-2/#sthash.7EjdIhz7.dpuf

Scopus, you’re unravelling. The urge to be inclusive may be partly well-intentioned but when you move into uncharted territory you need to be more than normally vigilant. Instead you’ve tucked your shirt into your underpants and are grinning fixedly and hoping no one has noticed. We’ve noticed. It’s just embarrassing. - See more at: http://masseyblogs.ac.nz/library/2013/08/19/scopus-youre-unravelling-2/#sthash.7EjdIhz7.dpuf

Scopus, you’re unravelling. The urge to be inclusive may be partly well-intentioned but when you move into uncharted territory you need to be more than normally vigilant. Instead you’ve tucked your shirt into your underpants and are grinning fixedly and hoping no one has noticed. We’ve noticed. It’s just embarrassing. - See more at: http://masseyblogs.ac.nz/library/2013/08/19/scopus-youre-unravelling-2/#sthash.7EjdIhz7.dpuf

Reaching Students: Developing a Library Student Ambassador Program

Interesting concept?

“Once a Library Ambassador, Always a Library Ambassador!” Using Peer Mentoring to Integrate the Library into the First-Year Academic Experience and Beyond

Andile Mncwabe's Farewell Presentation

Andile Mncwabe

Please visit Facebook to view Andile Mncwabe's Farewell Presentation photo album.

What to expect from academic journal publishers in the future?

The new AudioSlides option is available to authors of articles in selected Elsevier journals.

Find out more about this service and how to participate -  and listen to examples from the Audio Slides Gallery

AudioSlides are short, webcast-style presentations that are shown next to the online article on ScienceDirect. This format gives authors the opportunity to present their research in their own words, helping readers to quickly understand what a paper is about and appreciate its relevance.

Embracing Change (in Academic Libraries)

Serials Review 1 August 2013

The Internet, Google, e-journals, packages, e-books and patron driven acquisitions have all been perceived as “a threat to libraries as we know them.” Yet, in spite of these developments and under the weight of chronic budget pressures, the typical academic library now offers more users better access to more content and services than ever before. In this session we will look at how librarians and the vendors that serve them have responded to these “threats” to their future to create new and improved services ...

 

several areas of change.

•

The collection: moving to electronic

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The library as a place (physical and virtual)

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Services available from the library

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Librarian's role in curating and managing data sets

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Discovery tools and access to content

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How and where users can be reached

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Library's role in exposing the institution's research and knowledge assets on a world stage.